The purpose of this paper is to discuss the avenues for choosing pictures and visual images in testing situations for foreign and second language examinations. The paper demonstrates how quantitative and qualitative research from cognitive psychology, visual and verbal behavior studies, as well as Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) have contributed to the understanding of how visual images affect background schemata, learning, and testing. It is essential that test writers investigate how visuals and images can aid or hinder the assessment of language learning. It is hoped that this research will help the classroom practitioner, the materials developer, and most importantly the test writer/designer to choose, use, create, design and implement pictures into testing procedures, which are fair to the student population and offer a more accurate measure of a learner's ability to manipulate and communicate in the target language. It is concluded that a learner's sensitivity to language and the ability to create relations amongst words can be further enhanced by the use of visuals. (Contains 32 references.) (KFT)